MEET NEKODA

After I was born in 1960 in Novosibirsk (Western Siberia, Russian Empire) I immediately began to indulge in fantasies, both verbal and visual. Dreaming of far away continents, at the age of 13 I began to work with animals in local zoo, but after finishing the school instead of going around the world I started to work as a set decorator in the Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre and to study in the Institute of the Theatre, Music and Cinematography in Leningrad. After that I spent several years being a garbage collector in Leningrad and Latvian folk craftsman in Riga. In 1988 I finally set off to a remote destination and settled in Jerusalem. In 1991, together with Gali-Dana Singer, I wrote 'The Manifesto of Neo-Eclecticism', and since then I constantly break the laws of this radical art-movement and dismiss myself from it. Nevertheless my approach remains rather close to the basic principle of Neo-Eclecticism - the proximity of consciousness with its sub-laws: the unity and the struggle of the protagonists, the conversion of a quality into a quackery and a quandary, and the reflection of reflections. I also write fiction and essays, study and translate Talmudic and Midrashic literature - the ancient source of eclectic and hermeneutic thought


Moses’ Torah is a wonderful universal book! One can read it in any key, and every time the book can surprise you with something unexpected. It can reveal itself as a cookbook or a guide on non-traditional medicine. Our sages, blessed be their memory, realized very well that the Scripture tells about practically everything, and the interpreter’s task is to reveal the wealth of meaning in its words. Those meanings can be very far indeed from the narrated events. Booknik contributor Nekoda Singer now reads Torah as a treatise on art criticism, only to find that Mishpatim, a rather specific and dry chapter of the book, contains such original opinions that eclipse even the pearls of wisdom that used to be published in the old Soviet essay collection Masters of Art on Art.

(The link to the full text in Russian)


These days, the Kayma Gallery in Jaffa features the art show of the Booknik’s faithful contributor Nekoda Singer The Dump of Myths. The series of 3-D artifacts is presented there, and each of them is set in a writing desk or cupboard drawer, and done in mixed media. The artist timed his show with the 20th anniversary of the Neo-Eclectics Manifesto published by him and Gali-Dana Singer in Israel, both in Russian and Hebrew. Alexander Averbuch attended the art show, and asked Nekoda a number of questions regarding the event, and his creative life in general.

(The link to the full text in Russian)